Night 56: M21-M30 Hallway
Dinner had seemed to pass by too quickly, while night had come on quietly, with just the click of the door opening. Nonetheless, Peter had managed to get his new duffel bag packed with all of the medicine, syringes, and medical supplies that he might need without it being too heavy to manage. He still had to carry his shovel in his other hand,
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A piece of Indy and Scott's conversation drifted over, and he had to cough to get the beer out of his sinuses. Being an arrogant asshole got you more dates in movies than in real life, but not everyone could be Harrison Ford.
"Healing at warp speed. Like normal. I dislocated a kneecap. By all rights it should still be as big around as my head and twice as sensitive." Believe it or not, people called him too sensitive almost as often as insensitive. The ones that did the latter tended to know him better, though.
He poked the knee. It didn't really hurt unless he hit the bruises, which were superficial, or tried to actually use the leg.
"I couldn't walk on it today, but I could put some weight on it. Wrap it up and I should be able to hobble down there tomorrow. Just don't expect me to wrestle anything bigger than a German Shepherd."
Eating the pink pile of nutritionally balanced predigested extruded food product over on his desk would probably help, but junk food tasted better. Part of a healthy breakfast yadda yadda.
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No, all of his wounds were current and made themselves known as often as they could. He would have called his body a sadist if that made any sense; at this point, he was just wondering if his pain receptors would eventually get worn down, but he didn't know if it even worked that way.
"Yeah, well, be glad for it," he said with a shrug. "Not sure when we're going, but I don't know if we can put it off for another night." Scorched and bruised as he was, staying in like this was already driving him stir crazy, and he wouldn't be surprised if the others felt the same. At least there was booze. After glancing around at everyone, Harvey finally reached forward for a second beer.
"It's not like anyone's counting on the two of us for our fighting ability anyway," he pointed out. He didn't know how much Sangamon had contributed to what the other group had done last night, but Harvey was going to guess that he hadn't led the assault.
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Had Harvey ever told him he was a D.A. Fuck. Keeping track of what he knew and what he'd read so many times with a flashlight after lights-out he couldn't reroute those neurons with anything short of a sledgehammer was a pain. He conveniently ignored the fact that they'd done just that a few nights ago, but he hadn't slowed the group down even when he had been a little hazy on his own fucking name.
"If we stay together I can zap us back to the pantry if -- when -- things get nasty. You don't have any idea what's over there either, do you?" It was barely a question.
"I tried the bulletin, but all I got was the usual inability to grasp questions that might have more than one meaning, plus some vague bullshit warnings." He drained the last of his beer, and belched gently.
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"I'll hold you to that," he said before taking another sip of his second beer. He was getting a little more used to the taste, but it was going to be finished right as he actually started to find it bearable.
It was good to know that that ring could take them out of danger if it turned out that the coliseum was something beyond their means to deal with, though Harvey got the feeling that it would result in some people being left behind. He made a mental note to stay close to Sangamon when they went down there. Nothing against the others, but this was survival instinct kicking in.
"I haven't heard any more than you," he said with a shake of his head. "People seem tight-lipped about the whole thing. More than a little annoying." And unsettling, but he didn't need to voice that thought.
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He sounded like a fucking Buddhist monk, man. Definitely time for another beer.
"Either they've found something awesome down there or it's too traumatizing to talk about. Guess we'll find out."
It was still weird. People got all sorts of personal on the bulletin. One person keeping secrets was easy. A collective bowdlerization was tough, even with the Nurse Nanny brigade on the loose.
Oh, right. If he was going to sit around on his ass, he could be productive. He stood up and hopped a couple feet over to his desk and fell into the chair. The last half-labeled map he'd put up had stayed up through Landel's little passion play. Probably hadn't even been recycled. Assholes. He pulled out clean paper and a full map and started tracing, the corner held down with his beer.
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Now there was only one beer left, though he got the feeling that Jones was going to go for it -- either that, or Scott would grab one before he lost his chance entirely. He probably shouldn't have been keeping such meticulous track of it in the first place, but what else was he supposed to do?
Harvey raised an eyebrow when Sangamon suddenly stood up from his seat, hobbling over to his desk so that he could start writing something down. Or was he drawing? It hardly seemed like the time, but...
He decided that he was too lazy to get up so that he could watch over the man's shoulder and just remained in his seat. "What are you doing?" he asked, cradling his beer.
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"Making another map. Fuck if I'm going to spend half my time in this place giving new guys directions." Worse than tourists, since they were all clutching guidebooks full of laments over the local demeanor. He was just part of the zoo -- Homo Massholensis, in his native environment. Occasionally (more often now) one recognized him. He'd rattle off the Harbor weather forecast, which anyone with eyes and skin could determine from anywhere on the Freedom Trail, and they'd go away feeling like they'd had some excitement.
But it kept the checks rolling in (make that out to GEE, Int'l, please) and that meant he could eat and avoid getting a real job. He wasn't ungrateful, or oblivious. They just needed someone like him, all those off-duty bankers in Hawaiian shirts and their bored children.
"You've got a decent one, right?" He held up the original, annotated in large block print. Legible by flashlight in fog. Or post-vomit lacrimation, which was about as common.
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He could never quite decide on things like that anymore.
"Yeah, I've got one," he said with a nod. "Copied a set down into my journal a while ago." It had helped him a few times, though he hadn't even been taking the pieces of paper with him lately. That was because for the past few nights he'd had a specific destination in mind; he hadn't been wandering aimlessly. That was a nice feeling all on its own, wasn't it? And yet he didn't know if it was enough, or if it was even the right choice in the first place.
Either way, Sangamon had found a way to kill time and so Harvey leaned himself further back against the chair, slouching slightly as he closed his good eye. The other one would never close, but he'd gotten used to that somehow.
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The project turned out to be copying another map. "I copied them when I first got here too. About three weeks ago," he added. "You've been the one putting them up?"
He'd been around long enough to remember detailed notes being posted every time new patients arrived--full maps, guides to every known one of Landel's lab rats, all sorts of information compiled. It had all vanished after the censorship crackdown. Indy wondered what'd happened to it. With no sign of that material at all since then, chances were good the authors had been "released." Too bad he hadn't taken the time to make copies of all that; for all he knew, it was just gone. Damn.
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The notebook had more than that -- copies of bulletin notes, monster descriptions, a page of notes scattered around a section where Sharpie had bled through from the previous sheet. Enough that the spots could be pieced together. Any archeologist worth his fedora could puzzle out Fuck You Callahan, in large block print.
He pulled out the next of the maps. It was the roof map. The one he'd never heard a decent explanation for. "What the fuck was this about? Either of you around for that?" It was the kind of thing Edgeworth would only have included out of the kind of thoroughness that made for good librarians and basement-dwellers who thought miniatures made better friends than live humans.
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"I never did copy any of the maps. My skills of an artist aren't so good. I can draw sheep, and that's about it," Scott commented.
S.T. was pulling out another paper now, one that Scott had to say "Whoa, what?" to. He wasn't sure if he had seen a roof map before or not; maps tended to all blend together in his mind. That was probably why his "skills of a navigator" weren't so hot either. It was frankly a wonder that Scott hadn't gotten lost in the Institute more often by this point. Either way, he was curious about this map.
"I don't think so? But now I want to know who was. When did someone get to the freaking roof and live to map it?" Scott said in mild bafflement.
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Harvey was still curious about what the two of them had been discussing, though. They were acting like they hadn't just been huddling together and talking in secret, and it kind of bothered him. He sent Jones a glance, somewhere between questioning and annoyed.
"I have that one," he said as the map of the roof was shown. "No idea who originally put it up or how they got it, though. Might just be a prank." It wasn't nearly as detailed as the others, for one thing, and he'd never once heard of people getting that far up. Then again, no one really spoke about the basement either. Who knew? Sighing, he took another sip of his second drink.
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Indy wouldn't bet on either of those theories. For all they knew, someone here turned into a bird at night. Or, like Dent said, could be someone yanking their chains.
Speaking of Dent, he was sending an irritated look Indy's way now. What was that about? Huh. Indy took another swig of beer (the bottle was almost empty now; damn) and returned it with another slight eyebrow raise and a faintly quizzical expression.
Then his expression shifted into a grin. "Scott was just telling me about a girl here he's trying to impress. Either of you have any advice for him?" As much as he enjoyed fruitless speculation, getting on Pilgrim's case at least saved them the frustration of explicitly having to shrug their shoulders and file away another unanswered question. It also distracted him from the fact that his hand hurt like hell.
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"I'm not trying to impress her! I'm not!" he protested, a few sugary crumbs from earlier flying off his face.
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"Step two," he said, and shrugged. What the fuck had Debbie seen in him? Women like Rebecca wanted adventure. Interview your best chance at a Pulitzer on his infamous boat. Thing had the rough outline of a giant grey condom, rocking slowly with the waves, so it wasn't a big leap to fucking. The ones that stuck around longer saw something, but he didn't know what.
"Stand for something, dude. They'll either laugh in your face and walk away, or you might have something in common." Indy had brought it up just to see Scott splutter. Maybe even without a beer they could make him blush. Innocent kid. "What's she like?"
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Jones was an ally and nothing else. Why did he care what he'd been whispering about with Scott?
But then the situation turned even more ludicrous, as they segued from having a sensible conversation about the possibility of roof access to discussing Scott's girl problems. Considering what Harvey had been through recently, romantic prospects were the last thing he wanted to talk about.
"You're really thinking about something like that when we're in a situation like this?" he cut in, only barely holding back a scoff.
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